“Not happening. You ever hear the saying
you can’t unring a bell
?”
“The hell you can’t. You’re going to do exactly what I tell you. For your own damned good.”
She met his blazing eyes with a level look of her own. “There’s something we need to get straight between us, right now: you are not and never will be the boss of me. I go back if I want to go back. I keep my nose out of things if I want to keep my nose out of things. Otherwise, no.”
Their eyes clashed.
“What is that supposed to be, your own personal declaration of independence?” His voice was harsh, his face tight with anger and frustration. “Cher, this isn’t the battle of the sexes. I’m trying to keep you alive here. Why would you even want to fight with me about it?”
He was glaring down at her. She glared right back.
“This is why,” she said, and rose up on tiptoe to press her lips to his.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
T
HE STUBBLE ON HIS CHIN
as her soft skin brushed it felt . . . sexy. That she had to go up on tiptoe to reach his mouth felt sexy. The fact that he was nearly naked, and she was nearly naked, too, felt sexy.
Kissing him just because she could felt sexy. Even if he didn’t seem to want to respond.
His lips were hard and tight beneath hers. Hard and tight and stubbornly resistant, just like his entire body felt hard and tight and stubbornly resistant. But as her mouth moved on his, plying it, coaxing, tracing the closed line of his lips with her tongue, two things happened: his grip on her arms relaxed enough so she was able to pull them free and slide them around his neck, and he kissed her back with a sudden fierce hunger that made her toes curl and her heart leap and her blood turn to steam.
Then with an inarticulate sound he pulled his mouth free of hers, lifted his head, tightened his hold on her hipbones—
that
was where his hands had gone—and as she opened her eyes to blink up at him in bemusement he frowned down at her and pushed her a little away from him.
Just a little away, putting no more than a few inches of space between their lower bodies, because she still had her arms wrapped around his neck.
For a moment they simply stared at each other. Electricity arced between them, so strong it practically singed the air. Her heart pounded. Her breathing was uneven. Her pulse went all haywire. Her body leaned toward his like the needle of a magnet leans toward north.
Then she snuggled into him a little more so that the tips of her breasts settled firmly against his chest—her nipples tightened instantly, making her body clench deep inside—and his head reared back and his body stiffened like she’d hit him.
“We’re not doing this,” he said grimly.
She might have been dismayed by his apparent rejection if it hadn’t been for his voice, which was low and thick. And his eyes, which had a hard restless gleam that told its own story. And his hands, which were holding on to her hipbones like he couldn’t decide whether to push her away or pull her right up against him again. And the very concrete (and
concrete
was the word) proof of his desire in the bulge she’d felt surging to life at the front of his boxers before he had pushed her clear of it.
“Fine,” she replied in curt agreement, even though her voice was breathless and her breasts felt all prickly and tight and a hot sweet quickening had begun deep inside her body.
“You don’t want to get involved with me,” he warned. His voice was gritty and harsh. A dark flush had risen to stain his cheekbones. His eyes smoldered down into hers. “Not under these conditions. Not now.”
“No, I don’t,” she answered with absolute truth, and watched his eyes narrow and his mouth thin and his jaw harden as if he didn’t like that reply at all.
But what she didn’t add was that it was too late, she already was hopelessly involved with him, having taken a header into the deep end of that particular pool during the previous night, a header from which she was still trying to surface, still trying to figure out if she was going to swim or drown.
And what she didn’t do was stop leaning into him, or unwrap her arms from around his neck, or tear her eyes from his. And her heart didn’t stop pounding and her blood didn’t stop sizzling and her head continued to spin.
He was still looking at her as if he burned for her.
She couldn’t see her own face, but she was pretty sure she was looking back at him the exact same way.
“Caroline.” He seemed as if he wanted to say more, but he broke off instead to take a breath. He shook his head as if hoping to clear it and his eyes slid over her face. She could feel the tension in the solid, strong muscles of his shoulders and neck, feel the heat coming off his skin. Her lips parted. They had to, if she wanted to breathe. He continued in a rough-edged voice, as if she was making some kind of protest, “It’s you I’m thinking of here.”
“Am I arguing with you about it?” Despite being tart, her voice was unsteady, because that’s how she was feeling, kind of shaky and off-balance and wobbly and at the same time
on fire
.
She looked at him, at his dark, handsome face, at the sensuous curve of his mouth, at the jet-black glitter of his eyes, and felt a rush of desire so strong that she went weak at the knees. He was right. She knew he was right: getting involved with him at this juncture was an absolute mistake. Didn’t mean she was going to walk away. Didn’t mean she
could
.
“So let’s break this up,” he said, and from the way he moved his head and shoulders she knew what he meant:
let go of me
.
“Fine,” she replied for the second time, still curt. Still breathless from wanting him.
Slowly she unwrapped her arms from around his neck and let her hands fall.
It wasn’t her fault that he was nearly naked, or that his skin was so enticingly hot, or that her hands were reluctant to leave all those corded sinews. It wasn’t her fault that they couldn’t resist running over the heavy smoothness of his broad shoulders, or down the solid firmness of his wide chest. It wasn’t her fault that the soft prickle of his chest hair beneath her fingers plus the honed masculine contours of his six-pack abdomen dazzled her into stroking all the way down to the low-slung waistband of his boxers before her hands slid back up his body again with sensuous appreciation.
It wasn’t her fault that her hands on him made him shudder, or made his eyes blaze.
Reed made a harsh sound under his breath. “Damn it, Caroline,” he said, and let go of her hips to catch her wrists, stilling her hands against him just as they reached the firm, wide planes of his pecs again.
Their eyes collided. She forgot to breathe.
His eyes were as hot and hungry as she felt, and he didn’t pull her hands away from his chest.
That told her everything she needed to know.
“Reed,” she whispered. Then, because she just couldn’t help herself, she went up on tiptoe and kissed him again.
He stood there as if he’d been turned to stone, not kissing her back but not pushing her away, either, while his fingers tightened on her wrists and his chest expanded beneath her hands and heat radiated from him in waves. Then he muttered a disgusted-sounding
“shit”
against her mouth and let go of her wrists to slide his arms around her and pull her tight up against him and kiss her back.
She caught fire. Just like that. Like her blood was flammable and he’d just set it alight.
His lips slanted over hers, hot and demanding, and his tongue took possession of her mouth like he owned it. He kissed her with a fierce passion that sent shivery little tendrils of desire spiraling through her body, that made her insides feel all shaky, that made her dizzy. She kissed him back with an answering hunger of her own, wrapping her arms around his neck again, plastering herself up against him because she simply couldn’t do anything else, because she craved the feel of his hard body against hers, because she was swept away by need.
She could feel his arousal, feel his urgency, and she melted inside. She burned and quaked and wanted.
When his hand found her breast through the soft T-shirt that was practically no barrier at all, and cupped and caressed it, and then he ran his thumb back and forth over the already pebble-hard nipple, she moaned into his mouth, only to have the sound swallowed up by the intoxicating heat of his kiss. When his hand moved down to splay across her butt, to press her closer still to his telltale hardness, and then slid beneath the hem of the shirt to find her bare skin, she shivered and gasped.
“You’ve got the sexiest ass,” he murmured against her lips.
“You
were
feeling me up earlier, weren’t you?” she accused, although the lush devouring kisses he was dropping on her mouth were almost as distracting as his hand up her shirt.
“What if I said I was?”
“I liked it.”
“Ah.”
Then he was kissing her again like he could never get enough of her mouth and she was kissing him back the same way, and all the while her heart was hammering and her pulse was skyrocketing because his kisses were driving her wild and his hand was still up under her T-shirt and she still liked it there.
It was big, and long-fingered, and warm, and there was an abrasive quality to his palm that might have been faint calluses at the base of his fingers. It felt like a workingman’s hand, capable and strong, and her senses were reeling because it was fondling her naked behind. He stroked her curves, traced the cleft that separated them, delved between her legs.
“Oh.”
She made a soft sound of surprise as his exploring fingers found her most intimate place. They stroked, rubbed, then slid inside.
“Oh,”
she said again, and her bones dissolved. Just like that. If her arms hadn’t been locked around his neck, her knees would have given way and she would have collapsed.
“I want you.” His hoarse whisper came as his mouth left hers to slide across her cheek and nuzzle the hollow below her ear. He had one hard arm wrapped around her waist now, holding her in place for him. His other hand was still between her legs. His fingers still moved on her, knowing and sure, tantalizing her, touching her where she most wanted to be touched, then slipping inside her and pulling out again, in an erotic rhythm that had her melting for him, that made her quiver, that made her dizzy with desire.
“Reed.” It was all she could say. She was panting, moving against him, rocking into his erection, so aroused by the feel of it against her and what he was doing between her legs that she was gasping, trembling, so turned on that she could hardly think, let alone speak.
“Caroline.” He bent her back over his arm, trailing damp hot kisses down the side of her neck. Then his hand left its playground between her legs, leaving her empty, leaving her wanting.
“Don’t stop,” she protested in a throaty little voice, clutching him tighter. Her eyes opened just as he swept her off her feet, picked her up in his arms, and started walking with her, and she saw that his eyes were ablaze with passion and his face was tight with it.
“Not till I make you come for me,” he promised in a low growl that was so sexy she almost came there and then.
He put her down on the bed—it was wedged against the table, she saw with the tiny part of her mind that was still capable of noticing such things—and pulled her shirt over her head and shoved his boxers down his legs.
There was a moment there when he paused to look down at her, and the diamond-hard glint in his eyes was enough to make her heart pound and her pulse race. She tried to imagine seeing herself through his eyes: she was naked, leaning back on her elbows on a rumpled white sheet, her knees raised and slightly bent with one tipped inward so that at least the most essential part of her modesty was preserved. Her full round breasts and slim hips and long legs were on full display. Her face was tilted toward him so that her dark hair cascaded down her back. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were heavy lidded and sultry with desire. Her slender, creamy-skinned body throbbed with anticipation, and it showed in the arch of her back, in the rosy stiffness of her nipples, in the small, restless movements of her legs. In that same charged moment she registered his tall, athletic form, registered how big he was in every way that counted, and then she lay down and held out her arms to him and whispered his name.
She didn’t know if he kneed her legs apart or she opened them for him, but he came down on top of her, letting her feel his weight, and the heat of his body, and the thick hot length of him, which he moved suggestively against her without entering her, provocative teasing that made her go up in flames. He kissed her mouth, hot, deep kisses, caressed her breasts and kissed them, too, pulling the nipples into his mouth until they were wet and quivering and standing straight up to beg for more, until her body writhed and burned and clenched. He kissed his way downward, running his mouth over her navel and the flat plane of her stomach until she was breathing hard, trembling with anticipation, dying for what she knew was coming next. Then he was licking into the cleft between her legs and she was clutching his head and moaning and coming in long luscious waves of pleasure.
After that, she thought she was spent, but that was before he stretched himself back over her and parted her legs again and pushed his way inside. He was huge with desire, hard and pulsing with it, and her body tightened instinctively around him. Then the sweet, hot quickening began again as he moved inside her, going slow and easy at first until she was moaning and arching her back and clinging to him like he was the only solid thing left in the world. After that he took her hard and fast, kissing her mouth, kissing her breasts, driving into her with a fierceness that awakened every primitive urge that she hadn’t even known existed inside her, making her gasp and shudder and move with him and, finally, as she came with a shattering intensity that was like nothing she had ever experienced, dig her nails into his back and cry out.
“Oh, Reed. Reed.
Reed
.”